With the economy facing problems and doubts regarding the funding of government-sponsored retirement plans, there is an ever increasing need for individuals to shed debts and increase their savings goals. For the vast majority of consumers, research shows that periodic savings efforts, in the midst of current spending needs and habits, are insufficient to sustain any significant accumulation of savings.
There have been many previous attempts to use integrated financial network systems as a tool for helping individuals save, for example, known integrated financial network systems having included savings programs based on systems of creating excess funds from spending transactions. In such systems, consumers can tender an excess payment to a payee that they have an existing account with (e.g. utility and gas companies) and allow the excess funds to stay with the payee for the payment of future services or direct the payee to distribute the excess funds to an outside provider, such as a charitable (nonprofit) entity. The payee provides an active role as to account management and selection/distribution of the excess funds for internal purposes, as well as to outside providers. In a related system, consumers create excess funds when the face amount paid to a payee is in excess of the purchase price. In addition to the requirement for an excess payment, there is also the need for the payee to process the transaction by subtracting the amount of the purchase price from the amount tendered. In yet another known Point-of-Sale (“POS” retail) system, savings is based on an accumulation of credits in a customer's surplus accounts from financial transactions between the customer and a retailer. In this context, when the customer makes a purchase, the retailer demands an amount due typically at a POS station controlled by the retailer. In response to the customer engaging in a conventional credit/debit transaction and also entering an additional amount into the POS station, the additional amount is reported to the customer's bank where the selected amount is transferred from the customer's credit/debit account to the customer's savings account at the bank. Such systems provide the consumer with limited opportunities and incentives to create excessive funds and/or to determine the application of said funds, or require the payee to become actively involved on a transaction-by-transaction basis in determining when and how much to save.
Accumulating real savings requires incredible discipline or another approach altogether.